Pro-Life, Pro-Family Wins on Election Day in Governor’s Offices and Bathrooms

Timothy D. Easley/APDR. SUSAN BERRY4 Nov 2015

The pro-life and pro-family base of the Republican Party is celebrating following both gubernatorial elections Tuesday and the defeat of Proposition 1 – the “gender identity” bathroom bill – in Houston.

On Wednesday morning, Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, applauded the election of pro-life governors in Kentucky and Mississippi.

“This year’s historic election of a pro-life governor in Kentucky and the re-election of a pro-life governor in Mississippi are more evidence that the pro-life position is a winning position,” said Pavone in a statement sent to Breitbart News. “Americans are electing more leaders who know the difference between serving the public and killing the public.”

In Kentucky, Matt Bevin became only the second Republican to be elected governor in the last 40 years. While Kentucky has been a consistently Republican state in presidential elections, the Governor’s mansion has belonged to the Democrats, with Republicans only holding the state’s highest office for four of the last 44 years.

Bevin’s campaign also emphasized his support of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

While most polls had Bevin trailing, he won with some 53 percent of the vote in a race with three candidates. In Mississippi, pro-life Governor Phil Bryant easily won re-election with 66 percent of the vote.

A run-off election for governor of Louisiana later this month will also feature two candidates who are pro-life: Republican Sen. David Vitter and Democrat state House Minority Leader John Bel Edwards.

The Family Research Council is also praising the rejection of Houston’s Bathroom Ordinance Tuesday. Voters overwhelmingly defeated Proposition 1, which would have allowed any man or woman to use any bathroom based on whichever “gender identity” he or she chooses at any given time. With a success for Prop 1, both serious privacy concerns and hefty fines were at issue for voters.

“Houston has become a rallying cry for Americans tired of seeing their freedoms trampled in a politically correct stampede to redefine marriage and sexuality,” said Family Research Council Action president Tony Perkins in a press statement. “Houstonians sent a message heard across the country: They will not allow the government to flush away their money, and more importantly, their values and religious liberties.”

“While much of the debate focused on biological males using a woman’s bathroom, many voters told us they understood this involved a lot more than bathrooms,” he continued. “The mayor’s efforts to disenfranchise voters and subpoena pastors’ sermons and private communications demonstrated this law was ultimately about silencing and even stripping away the livelihood of those who refused to yield their beliefs to this new morality.”

“This ordinance would allow men who at any moment declare their “gender expression” as female to use women’s bathrooms, showers and locker rooms,” he explained. “It would also have made it a crime for business owners or employees – including non-church owned religious non-profit organizations – to interfere with it in order to protect women’s safety and privacy.”

“These ordinances are part of the same national agenda declaring God’s moral law, design of marriage and even male and female to be a lie,” Owens added. ‘The LGBT community is well-funded and planned to use Houston as the model to get similar bills passed around the nation. CAAP is working to educate all pastors, but especially black pastors about the negative effects of bills like this one.”

Owens said the ordinance was a threat not only to the safety of women and girls, but against freedom of religious expression and “God-given, constitutionally-guaranteed rights.”